


white out (i'll find our names between the lines)

by amorremanet



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, Autistic Character, Autistic Scott McCall, Canonical Character Death, Colors, Concerned Derek, Darkness Around The Heart, Depressed Scott McCall, Depression, Derek Hale & Scott McCall Friendship, Derek and Scott are Brothers, Emotional Hurt, Emotionally Repressed, Episode Tag, Episode: s03e06 Motel California, Episode: s03e18 Riddled, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Scott, Hurt Stiles, Illnesses, Love Confessions, M/M, Melancholy, Memories, Nogitsune Stiles, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Scott McCall, Parent Death, Pining, Poetry, Scott Needs A Hug, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Secrets, Sick Stiles, Suicide Attempt, Worried Scott McCall, Worry, sick Scott, so fucking help me I will make autistic!Scott the new fanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 02:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s the lab-coat that the doctor wears while he’s / asking if your given name is some misspelling and it’s / the too methodical drum of his fingernails on your / patient file while you sit on the bench and wait for the / bad news to get worse. And the lights in here all drown us / out, the way I’ve started drowning in my shirts and in / your arms, but the sad thing is that I’ve pictured us in / some situations not entirely unlike this before.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	white out (i'll find our names between the lines)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [solvecoagula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solvecoagula/gifts).



> Written for the [42 day poetry challenge](http://amorremanet.tumblr.com/post/68446347811/42-day-poetry-writing-challenge) for day thirty-six: "Write a poem about the color of your choosing without actually naming the color (using it as the title is acceptable)." (…it cheats slightly in the last stanza. I'm just going to blame these emotionally compromising boys and their fricking feelings.)

It’s the blinding blink of fluorescent lights  
and the off-colored empty walls around us  
and the stark, starched gown you’re wearing  
as it brushes up against knobby knees and I  
just try not to look at the floor. Because you’ve  
seen me weak like this before, the same as I’ve  
seen you, but forever means something other  
than the mess we’re in tonight. Or anyway, it’s  
supposed to, but I guess that’s not always right.

It’s the glow of your skin around a welling up of  
blood, all thick and warm and red, right after you  
fell off your bike because we are six years old and  
uncoordinated and the sidewalk’s not exactly even  
so you stumble and your wheels catch and you go  
flying for a second and when I catch up with the  
box of bandaids that I can’t leave home without,  
it’s the flash of your knife’s edge teeth as you thank  
God that I’m asthmatic so I always lag behind. As  
though I wouldn’t come back for you, as though I’d  
ever leave you with skinned knees and gored up elbows  
or anything that could be even worse than that.

It’s the lab-coat that the doctor wears while he’s  
asking if your given name is some misspelling and it’s  
the too methodical drum of his fingernails on your  
patient file while you sit on the bench and wait for the  
bad news to get worse. And the lights in here all drown us  
out, the way I’ve started drowning in my shirts and in  
your arms, but the sad thing is that I’ve pictured us in  
some situations not entirely unlike this before. The sterile  
setting’s right, at least, except that in my head, you’re getting  
tested for your father’s family’s heart problems because  
maybe your chest’s been feeling tighter lately just not in the  
glaring deluge way of panic attacks. And anyway we’re older,  
too, and I had to beg you to come in to get this looked at,  
and when I curl my hand around yours, our matching rings  
knock up against each other and I don’t have to leave the room.

It’s the snow that wasn’t meant to come so much  
because we’re not far enough up in the mountains  
to get a snow like this, not even in NorCal, but we’re  
thirteen years old and we don’t care because for once,  
we get to have a true white Christmas. Snowball fights  
and pushing each other around in piles of the stuff with  
mud barely concealed underneath (it’s a lot of snow for us  
and way more than we’re used to but that doesn’t really  
mean that much), and when my back smacks into the  
ground as I end up underneath you, with your legs snug  
wrapped around my hips, I arch up into you in these  
instinctive motions that neither of us fully understand.

It’s the fireworks and the way my chest constricts, not  
the gasping, drowning feeling like I’m having an attack,  
but the sort of warmth that bubbles up and over into  
laughing while I’m writhing flush against you and snaking  
my hips against yours and getting mud all over the back of  
my red hooded sweatshirt. And my mom’s gonna yell at me  
for that later but you pin my wrists down to the yielding  
ground and my breath catches in my throat until I choke  
out a howl so hard, it hurts my sides. Because I’m right  
where I’m supposed to be right now and I never saw it  
coming but you’re right there with me and it makes more  
sense than anything else in the entire world ever has. And  
I feel like an idiot when it’s so obvious, like black words  
spelled out in stark paint on the walls, but I didn’t see it  
or the flush that drains the color from my cheeks and twists  
through the pit of my fucking stomach because I know in  
this moment that I want you and that you can never know.

It’s the twinkle of your messy smile when you  
clamber off of me without noticing that I got hard  
because we were so close and you were rubbing on  
my hips and I wanted to kiss you and let you do  
whatever you wanted to my body. And for a moment,  
it’s the heart-racing, skin-prickling, lung-clenching,  
marrow-deep terror that echoes in my pulse: what if  
he’s put two and two together, what if he felt my dick  
beneath him before climbing off. But you didn’t and  
you haven’t because all you say is that it’s really  
nice to hear me laugh again. You say I haven’t since  
my dad walked out at Halloween. I didn’t even  
notice that but you did, so then it becomes the empty  
hollow skipped meal feeling of knowing that my sides  
might hurt because they’re not really used to laughter  
anymore. Finally, though, it’s the dreamy sigh across my  
hot cocoa with marshmallows because you saw that  
about me, something that I didn’t see myself, and I have  
to wonder how much better you know me than I do.

It’s the stark, starched shirt I had to wear and  
the emptiness around it, like it might’ve been  
moving on its own accord and not because I’m  
some warm body wrapped up inside it. My whole  
stomach turned over in some Olympic-worthy damn  
gymnastics and it wouldn’t settle down because  
hers was my first funeral, hers were the first bleached  
looking frozen hands I saw inside a casket and even  
more than not knowing what it felt like to address  
death and deal with the absent space that someone  
leaves behind, my mind blanked out at trying to  
say anything to you. What could I even say to that?  
Dear best friend, I’m sorry that your mother died.  
Dear _mejor amigo_ , I know no one could ever take her  
place and I’d never even try that but whatever you  
need me to do for you, I’ll do it, anything you want at all.  
Dear brother, I’m sorry that I get tongue tied so easily  
especially when you need me to just know outright what  
words go where and in what order and how to say them.  
Dear other half, please accept my fingers all laced up with  
yours because I have nothing else that I can offer you.

It’s the cold around me in the waiting room,  
which doesn’t go away when he shows up but  
lingers and scrapes along my bones, leaves me  
curling up and in on myself, knees drawn to chest  
as I huddle and hug myself because I still feel you  
and the weight of you along my front even though  
you’re by yourself in someplace even colder. And  
when I hold my shins and shiver, he offers me his  
leather jacket, which I wouldn’t mind except that it’s  
humiliating in the way where I’m engulfed by it and by  
his heady stench of dirt and dog and the dirtiest floor  
at the seediest bar. My cheeks go bloodless from the  
spiderweb twisting sensation pricking out along the  
back of my neck because his jacket’s bigger than I  
thought it would be and my shoulders dissipate into  
the fabric and regardless, I’m still so freezing that my  
hands tremble and my mouth goes dry. I can’t even  
tongue at my chapped lips because there’s not a drop  
of saliva left inside my guilty mouth, not after making  
you the promise that I left you with and not when you’re  
trying to go where I can’t follow as though I’ll ever let you,  
as though you don’t deserve everything that you’d give me.

It’s the spark, the hot, sudden blaze that sears my eyes  
as I light up the road flare in the center of a parking lot,  
of a gasoline puddle that I made myself, and it’s the way  
conviction burns all up and down my bloodstream until  
you start crying and still step into this funeral pyre with  
me because until then, there’s no doubt in my mind that  
this is the right course of action, what I want and what  
you need and what alone could be better for everybody else.  
I don’t believe it, I just know, the same way that I’d know  
you in the most impenetrable darkness, the same way that  
I’ll always pick out which heartbeat’s yours. But then you  
change your mind about setting yourself on fire because  
once upon a time, you said that you weren’t up for that,  
except you climb into the mess I made and say I’ll have to  
take you with me, then, and everything just washes out  
as my fingers slacken and my heart flops over like my old  
asthmatic lungs and I question everything I think I know.

It’s the traces that the dead leave in their wake,  
ghosts and images and old photographs like dying  
stars. As we wait for you together and I trace my eyes  
along the hallway length, I can’t help wondering if she  
sees them now or how her powers work for her. I mean,  
I know that I can’t see dead people but she could see them  
maybe, that might be in her repertoire, and maybe she  
would see the histories that have lived and died in this  
so-called memorial. We call it that but that isn’t really  
what it is. No hospital deserves that name. Hospitals are  
mausoleums dressed up in the kind of scientific accuracy  
she’s always treasured. Hospitals are tombs pretending to  
put people back together, and maybe she’d know that better  
than anybody else by now. Maybe the restless spirits would  
reach out to her, grope at her for someone might understand,  
and I feel for them, I do, because the way they cling at her is  
the same way that I want to scoop you up and never let you go.

It’s the leaden guilt that drops into my empty stomach  
as the doctor squeezes my shoulder and tells me to stop  
hugging you, to get out from between your knees already,  
because you can’t go through with the test if I’m still in  
here, something about the radiation or who even really  
knows. It’s the vacancy that spills across my mind as you  
squeeze me tighter one last time and brush your palm  
across my shoulder-blade and I catch myself wondering  
if you’ve noticed that this shirt’s too big, that my bones  
strain at my skin more than they used to do. It’s the flash of  
feeling everything too much and the shut down that comes  
when all the runoff from everyone washes out the lines  
between me and them, and the flash of seeing some gruesome  
recognition knot your brow and twist your lips, and the sucker  
punch of not wanting you to know because it’s not important.  
Not when you’re going into another inconclusive test while  
I’m still walking, talking, ghosting through my days just fine.

It’s the arctic parch that sweeps down through my throat  
as I sit down with him again and he tells me, “You’ve lost  
weight.” There’s no question to it and there’s no doubt,  
not even a gleam of skepticism in his voice. He’s sure about  
this and he’s right to be and I swallow thickly, trace dried out  
tongue over dried out lips and nod as I hunch in on myself  
again. Normally, I’d at least try to give him eye contact — after  
everything we’ve put each other through, he deserves that much  
effort from me — but when I try tonight, the goosebumps well up  
like blood on your skinned knees and elbows and everything  
turns to fucking ice, and I stumble over the words for two  
whole minutes before I manage to agree with him. Shaking  
my head, I shrug and disappear again into his leather jacket,  
saying, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Half the time, I’ve  
got no appetite, and when I do, I can’t keep most things down.  
It’s been like this since the ice baths and it’s worse when I try to  
force it but some days, that’s the only way that I eat anything.  
Is it really that noticeable?” He says it is, that I look sick and kind  
of pale, that he knows this particular red hooded sweatshirt, he  
knows how it clung tighter to my chest than you did just back in  
March when he dragged me lifeless from a wolfsbane-clouded  
room. I didn’t think it was a problem yet but I guess that I’ve been  
wrong before and I hug his jacket tighter around me. It’s not you,  
not even close, but at least it’s something warm that I can hide in.

It’s the weak, wobbling, whimpery noise that I choke out  
when the next thing he asks is whether or not I’ve told you.  
He doesn’t ask about anyone else, it’s just, “Does Stiles know?  
Have you told him yet?” and all I can do is shake my head again  
and close my eyes so they won’t water up and say, “I can’t. You  
know I can’t. Not right now. Not while he’s like this. He’s got  
more important things to — he might have what his mom had  
and it could kill him if he does and after everything, he just…  
He needs to think about himself right now, Derek. He can’t take  
this on, too. Not like this.” It’s the blanking out that comes when  
he actually asks before he hugs me but it’s also the warmth that  
washes over me once I’m in his arms, snaking mine around his  
broad shoulders, burrowing into his neck and breathing him deep  
as he rubs my back. It’s the sob that slips out and the tears that  
singe and burn as they flow over as he lips at my temple and says,  
“Sick or not, he loves you and he’d want to know. Tell him.  
Every day, I wish that I’d told Laura sooner. It’ll hurt, but tell him.”

It’s the feeling in my chest and bones and heart right now  
as I’m waiting out here for you and he and I have settled into  
comfortable silence, the sort that you can only get with someone  
else who knows the things you’re carrying inside of you. And if  
you were out here now, I don’t even know what I could say to you  
because if I told you exactly how I feel, you’d roll your eyes and  
ruffle my hair (and linger over it like you’re afraid that you might  
find some evidence of gasoline again) and tell me that colors can’t  
be feelings and emotions have names for a reason. But there aren’t  
any other words for this, for all of this, for all the nuances and tangles  
and the way my lips catch fire at the thought of telling you anything,  
and the way everything whites out at the thought that dogs me in  
and out, skinning me with every heartbeat: sometimes forever isn’t  
feasible, sometimes things just happen, I might not have another  
chance. I lace my fingers up with his and we’re still waiting and  
maybe the words will all fall into place by the time they let us see you.

It’s your fingers combing through my hair so delicately,  
with such uncommon gentleness for you, as you check me  
over for any lingering traces of gasoline after shower number  
seven of nine. I can still smell it, I’ll still smell it for a few more  
days, but the only reason that I try so hard to scrub it off is  
that your bony hands keep coming up all slick and sticky.


End file.
